According to his lawyer, Indiana high school senior Tyell Morton would have faced a maximum of three years had he brought a gun to school. Unfortunately for young Morton, he brought a blow-up doll instead. [Nsenga Burton/The Root, WTHR, Alkon]
Archive for June, 2011
The publicity squeeze
After taking heat in the press, Montgomery County, Md. has waived a $500 fine levied against a kids’ lemonade stand [WUSA, Daily Caller]
A baffling award for ABC’s Toyota scaremongering
John Cook at Gawker wants to know how a coveted Edward R. Murrow prize could just have been bestowed on the Toyota-panic reporting of ABC’s Brian Ross (“America’s Wrongest Reporter”), given that it showcased staged, fakey footage, relied heavily on the assertions of a safety consultant whose plaintiff’s-side involvement in the controversy went unmentioned, and omitted details that would have raised readers’ doubts on key themes, among many other sins. Later investigations, of course, decisively refuted the lawyer-stoked fears that Toyotas have some mysterious tendency to accelerate out of control. More: Ted Frank and Hans Bader, and my take on the sad history of media irresponsibility on car-safety scares.
“Cromwell & Goodwin”
Scam investigators are starting to assess the harm done by a pretend “law firm,” including $6,775 in losses to a victimized British man. Fortunate that it was just fake; imagine how much more damage the law firm might have done had it been real! [AmLaw Daily]
Tough as nails on manicure discrimination
“A Maryland man who was charged $1 more for a manicure than women has filed a lawsuit for $200,000 claiming sex discrimination.” [MyFoxDC]
Conrad Black “supercilious” in the slammer?
Watch out for sentencing spin, warns Scott Greenfield.
Liquor store licensing rules
They could drive you to drink — especially if you’re not politically well-connected [Coyote]
“Judge rules Righthaven lacks standing to sue, threatens sanctions over misrepresentations”
Copyright troll tripped up:
A federal judge in Las Vegas today issued a potentially devastating ruling against copyright enforcer Righthaven LLC, finding it doesn’t have standing to sue over Las Vegas Review-Journal stories, that it has misled the court and threatening to impose sanctions against Righthaven. … [U.S. District Court Judge Roger] Hunt’s ruling today came in a 2010 Righthaven lawsuit against the Democratic Underground, operator of a big political website.
One of DU’s message board posters had reprinted without permission, but with link and credit, four paragraphs’ worth of an article under copyright to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which is one of a number of newspapers with working agreements with RightHaven. And this part’s interesting:
In their counterclaim [which Judge Hunt allowed to proceed], attorneys for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital free speech group based in San Francisco, hit Righthaven and Stephens Media with allegations of barratry (the alleged improper incitement of litigation); and champerty (an allegedly improper relationship between one funding and one pursuing a lawsuit)….
Some fans of entrepreneurial lawyering in the academy and elsewhere have sought to portray rules against barratry and champerty as wrongheaded survivals of a much older approach to the role of the legal profession. But it looks as if EFF — no one’s idea of a Blackstone-reading antiquarian club — just put those rules to powerful use. [Las Vegas Sun]
P.S. Bloggers who settled wonder: can we get our money back?
“A hospital drug shortage made in Washington”
I’ve got a post at Cato at Liberty getting into more detail about some of the deadly side effects of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulation, an issue raised previously in this space.
Before being suspended over hungry crocodiles
You’ll need to sign a really strong liability release [St. Petersburg Times]